Looking Back at Topps Baseball Cards During the Wild 1970's:
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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

THINGS YOU NOTICE AS A KID: 1975 RICK MILLER (#103)

Another of those cards that stuck with me all these years was a
card that suffered from something that was quite prominent throughout
1970's Topps cards: odd tilting in the background.

But THIS card, #103 in the 1975 set, Rick Miller, was the one I first noticed because it looked so "wrong".

Take a gander:

Now how does THAT angle work in the background?

Now, what makes the background so odd is that Miller, for all
intent and purposes, looks like he's perfectly upright in the shot, but
the background is SO ridiculously tilted it's bizarre!

Don't you think?

How'd the photographer pull that off?

My friend thinks that in actuality, Miller was bent over in a
"batting" pose, and Topps went ahead and "stood him straight", thereby
tilting the background instead.

Whatever it was that happened, it left a mark on a young six-year-old way back when.

If anyone has a better guess as to how this came about I'd love to hear it…

As for Miller himself, it's easy to forget that he carved out quite
a decent career in the big leagues, playing for 15 seasons, all but
three for the Boston Red Sox (the other three were in Anaheim with the
Angels between 1978 and 1980).

He even won a Gold Glove in 1978 while with the Angels at
centerfield, and was a contributing part of that much-overlooked 1979
Angels powerhouse team, as he hit .293 on a squad that also featured the
likes of Don Baylor, Bobby Grich, Rod Carew, Dan Ford
and Carney Lansford, among others.

Miller finally called it a career after the 1985 season, finishing
up with decent numbers: 1482 games played, 1046 hits, and a .269
average.